The Bear
Anton Chekhov
First, we watched Chekhov’s comedy shorts which were made in 2010. “The Bear” was presented by Julian Barratt and Julia Davis. The plot is about young lady on the one side, who is in a “deep mourning” about death of her last husband and landowner on the other, who is in “desperate need of money”.
After first reading we start to open our characters a little bit more. Popov – young beautiful woman, recently widowed. She discovered that her husband was unfaithful to her with other women. Even though Popov’s husband died, she decided to prove to him that “true love” exist by locking herself in the house. The butler, Luka is trying to change the situation, but he is hopeless. Suddenly the bell rings and we are introduced a new character Smirnoff, landowner, retired lieutenant of artillery. The reason of his visit is Popov’s last husband owes him 1200 roubles for oats. Unfortunately, Madam does not have this money in cash at her house and promised to pay it in 2 days. While Smirnoff can not wait. If he does not pay his mortgage, the bank would take his estate. He is tired and angry, going around his landlords but no one paid him. Smirnoff decided to stay at Popov’s house till she can pay him back.
The conflict in this play not only between characters, but inside them as well. In the start, Popov introduced to us as an unhappy woman, whose expectation about marriage failed. Instead of sending her energy of finding ways to be happy, she used it in a way to prove to herself and to everyone that she is “a good girl, a true wife”. Furthermore, she wants to prove that point to her husband, who is…dead?! At the same time, Smirnoff is deeply disappointed with women. He is disrespectful to them and thinking about them as a part of the furniture. However, he has an ideal of “a real woman”, but he has not meet her yet.
In unit 9 Popov asks Smirnoff to leave her house, but he is angry enough to refuse it. On the pick she started to call him: “Bear! Bear! Bear!”. In Russian folklore a bear symbolizes a spirit, uncontrollable and dangerous animal. Straight after the insult, Smirnoff is calling a duel and Popov excepts it. The passion and energy of her character is charming him. “Fight a duel! That really is equality, emancipation! That does make the sexes equal! I shall shoot her on principle. But what a woman! ... She accepted the challenge! Honour bright, I’ve never seen anyone like her in my life! …”. He falls in love and explain the feelings to Popov. At first there is anger, then confusion and then acceptation.
Also, there is a third role – a butler, Luka. In the start of the play with his monologue he introduces the characters. Madam Popov as a “young and beautiful, blooming like a rose” and Smirnov, as a “regular devil”. From a very beginning the butler is close to Madam. However, I can not find what is his motive in re-marrying Popov. He might be naturally wishing only the best for her, or he might have some benefits out of it.
During rehearsals and lessons, I recorded videos with exercises which were done for this play. All of them can be found in my acting logbook.
Anton Chekhov
29/01/1860 - 14/07/1904
Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. Chekhov described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anton-Chekhov
There are some playwrights who are so busily present in their work that it's like you have the author beside you murmuring comments on the action. Chekhov is different; what does he think of his characters? Does he admire them or pity them? Ask us to examine or ridicule? It's never obvious. Chekhov's characters tend to let their mouths run away with them. It's almost as if Chekhov lets silences form in his play, which his characters nervously fill and thus reveal themselves.
This is why Chekhov continues to be an important model. We've turned away somewhat from "messages" and "thesis plays"; the contemporary preference is for authorial blankness, not of style but of commentary; we like stark juxtapositions and moral emptiness, the responsibility placed on the audience to make the judgment. Chekhov is rightly admired for the complexity of his characters and the extraordinary elegance of his narratives, but beneath that it's the dark, dark irony and pitiless gaze that make him truly our contemporary.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/theatreblog/2010/nov/03/theatre-anton-chekhov-modern
Practitioners
Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Stanislavsky (born January 1863, Moscow, Russia—died August 7, 1938, Moscow), Russian actor, director, and producer, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (opened 1898). He is best known for developing the system or theory of acting called the Stanislavsky system, or Stanislavsky method.
Staging Chekhov’s play, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko discovered a new manner of performing: they emphasized the ensemble and the subordination of each individual actor to the whole, and they subordinated the director’s and actors’ interpretations to the dramatist’s intent. Actors, Stanislavsky felt, had to have a common training and be capable of an intense inner identification with the characters that they played, while still remaining independent of the role in order to subordinate it to the needs of the play as a whole. Fighting against the artificial and highly stylized theatrical conventions of the late 19th century, Stanislavsky sought instead the reproduction of authentic emotions at every performance.
The Stanislavsky method, or system, developed over 40 long years. He tried various experiments, focusing much of the time on what he considered the most important attribute of an actor’s work—bringing an actor’s own past emotions into play in a role. But he was frequently disappointed and dissatisfied with the results of his experiments. He continued nonetheless his search for “conscious means to the subconscious”—i.e., the search for the actor’s emotions. In 1935 he was taken by the modern scientific conception of the interaction of brain and body and started developing a final technique that he called the “method of physical actions.” It taught emotional creativity; it encouraged actors to feel physically and psychologically the emotions of the characters that they portrayed at any given moment. The method also aimed at influencing the playwright’s construction of plays.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Konstantin-Stanislavsky
Stanislavski’s techniques
Given circumstances
The given circumstances are the information about the character that you start off with and the play as a whole. How old is the character? What’s their situation in the play and in relation to the other characters? Are there any notes provided about the play and its characters? Such notes and stage directions may not tell you everything you need to build a character but they are the starting point from which you’ll work to examine the other questions.
Emotional memory
Emotional memory is when the actor finds a real past experience where they felt a similar emotion to that demanded by the role they are playing. They then ‘borrow’ those feelings to bring the role to life.
Method of physical actions
Imagine a simple activity like cleaning your teeth and then imagine a husband cleaning his teeth whilst deliberating on how to tell his wife about his mistress. This is a simple illustration of how a physical action can release the necessary emotions.
Subtext
The script of a play could be called the text. The subtext is the actual meaning and motivation behind the lines that are spoken and the actions taken. For example, the heroine might say to the hero, “I love you” and we might assume that it is the happy ending fairy tale moment. But the delivery would be very different if she was worried that he was about to walk out on her.
If
Stanislavski said that the character should answer the question, 'What would I do if I was in this situation?' Also known as the ‘magic if’, this technique means that the actor puts themselves into the character’s situation. This then stimulates the motivation to enable the actor to play the role.
Objective, super-objective and the through line
An objective is the reason for our actions. What are we trying to achieve? Life, people and circumstances constantly put up barriers in our way. Each of these barriers presents us with the objective of getting through them. You shouldn't try to express the meaning of your objective in terms of a noun, always use a verb, eg 'I wish to...'
The super-objective is an over-reaching objective, probably linked to the overall outcome in the play. We use the word super-objective to characterise the essential idea, the core, which provided the impetus for the writing of the play. A character’s objectives are likely to be stages in the journey towards the super-objective. If that journey is perceived as a clear path to the super objective, then you have your through line.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxn4mp3/revision/7
Michael Chekhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in August 1891. In 1912, Chekhov became a leading actor of the Moscow Arts Theater, studying Stanislavski’s new methods of ‘affective memory’. By 1918 Chekhov began to investigate Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science through his friend, writer Andrei Bely. Chekhov began incorporating some of Steiner’s philosophies in his work. He began to create his own acting technique.
https://www.chekhovacademy.com/michael-chekhov/
The Psychological Gesture is an amazing acting tool designed to get the actor instantly into character. If we define gesture to mean a movement that has intention, we could say that the Psychological Gesture is a movement that expresses the psychology of the character. Chekhov defines the psychology to consist of the thoughts, feelings and will of a human being. Hence, the PG is a physical expression of the thoughts, feelings and desires of the character, incorporated into one movement.
One path created by Chekhov is called, Leading Questions, in which you cultivate your imagination by asking questions. Your imagination will respond instantly and your body will begin to express the movement in small ways before you can even verbalize your answers.
Every objective you identify can be gesturized. This transforms your intellectual knowledge of your objective into your body and voice: the only parts of the actor that the audience actually experiences.
Max Stafford-Clark
Max Stafford-Clark was born in 1941. In 1974 Max founded the influential theatre company Joint Stock with Bill Gaskill. Joint Stock pioneered a new way of creating theatre working with writers and actors in a workshop environment.
Rather than there being a hierarchy of director and writer, producer, then actors, the whole company was considered equal and a play was developed by the group.
Units and actions
“A unit is determined by what the character that runs the scene wants. An action is the tactic the protagonist takes to achieve that objective, and it has to be described with a transitive verb.
Once a scene is divided into units it is actioned i.e. each line is described using a transitive verb. A transitive verb takes a direct object. An action explains what the character wants to do to the character they are speaking to. The subject does something to the object, which is why you use a transitive verb.
http://www.outofjoint.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Max-Stafford-Clark-Workpack.pdf
Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner is an American actor and acting teacher who created the Meisner technique.
Meisner felt that a mental approach was too internal. Instead, an actor must have their creativity provoked by fierce attention to their fellow actor—which creates a tension the audience can observe.
At the Neighborhood Playhouse, Meisner created a system of routines designed to discover authentic acting choices from organic impulses that were provoked by one’s scene partner.
The Meisner technique has three main components that all work hand in hand:
Emotional preparation
Repetition
Improvisation
Meisner felt that the process of activating “affective memory” in the scene removed the actor from the live moment; therefore, his fundamental principle was presence and an intense observation of a scene partner. Choices, inspirations, and provocations must be inspired by a relationship to another person—which not only deepen an actor’s awareness but also necessitates that every actor make definitive choices that provoke creative reactions. In this way, Meisner encouraged a symbiotic ecosystem in a scene where each actor must build off one another. This is part of what he called “emotional preparation.”
The foundation of Meisner’s technique is repetition, which removes the pomp of aesthetic acting and also gets actors out of their heads so they can rely on their organic instincts. It is these authentic instincts, as provoked by another person in the live moment, that capture realistic human behavior, Meisner taught. Repetition also creates a system of preparation that gives the actor the courage and confidence to feel comfortable in the scene.
Meisner preached that no choices should be made until a force provokes the choice, thereby justifying it. If an actor only responds to justified and organic stimuli improvisationally, they must be in-the-moment and watchful for that meaningful stimuli. This creates the “given circumstances” of the scene. Once an actor has a clear sense of the “given circumstances,” inspired by the stimuli, then they could create an abundant inner life for the character to draw from, Meisner taught.
https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/the-definitive-guide-to-the-meisner-technique-67712/
Katie Mitchell
Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Her work is characterised by the creation on stage of a highly distinctive environment, the intensity of the emotions portrayed and by the realism of the acting.
She has also experimented with incorporating video into live theatre. Over the past decade Mitchell has created works in which performers use and manipulate cameras to project images onto screens.
Mitchell has often attracted harsh criticism not only for the work itself but also for the methods she employs, chiefly the way in which she takes total artistic control over every single aspect of the production. This control also extends to the script and the approach has left Mitchell facing accusations of having a disregard for the text.